Star Wars Bank Holiday Special at the Retro Room

It was summer 1983 in Belfast and while a real civil war was in full swing outside we were all beaming from ear to ear watching a galactic civil war inside the Cannon Cinema in the city centre...

I remember the whoops and cheers at the sight of the opening crawl and the raw thrill of seeing that speeder bike chase on the big screen like it was yesterday. Return of the Jedi absolutely blew my seven year old mind out the back of skull and clean through the seat.

I've been a massive Star Wars nerd ever since. In fact my first memory of the arcades was also in 1983 queueing for what felt like hours to play the Star Wars cockpit at Funland in Millisle. We queued for ages, lasted about ten seconds 'cos we'd no idea what we were doing and re-joined the queue for another go! A brand spanking Dragon's Lair sat in the corner untouched the whole day from memory.

Fast forward to 2023 when I was still part of Base Arcade and we'd just landed a Star Wars cockpit! I went to my sister's in Wiltshire where a job lot of games we'd bought were on a stopover and it was emotional and amazing to see it again. Have we got some in the arcade you ask? Unfortunately the games were way ahead of their time back in the day and have complex boards and vector monitors which makes them extraordinarily hard to maintain, especially in the rigours of an arcade. We'd love to have them but really they likely belong more in a museum than an arcade these days.

Anyway enough 80s reminiscing! We're bringing a ton of Star Wars games to the arcade on the May bank holiday! From classic FPS like Dark Forces to the wonderful Tie Fighter and X Wing sims and to more modern affairs like Super Star Wars, we'll have a glut of games from that wonderful galaxy far, far away. Weird ones too like Star Wars 1987, utterly bizarre!

And from 6pm we'll be showing some Star Wars fan films too, just for fun. The arcade will be open from 11am to 8pm for this special event.

May the 4th be with you... always.